The New Poor

Why my family can’t live on £41K 

by “Kate Church"
 
From The Times 14 July 2012

She has felt the loneliness of middle-class poverty.
So five years ago, we downsized (a pleasant euphemism for a humiliating, traumatic event). 

Still, I was glad to give up my large, elegant house in leafy West London to move to a small, plain one, because that Georgian beauty was a nausea-inducing financial millstone — however, certain friends stopped speaking to me. One had old baby clothes to get rid of: “I’ll take them,” I said. Pride is the first luxury to go (shortly followed by the cleaner, the nanny, and the private nursery). My so-called friend dumped her cast-offs in my hall in a bin bag. She was awkward when I rang. 

My ex-neighbour (dinner parties, babysitting each other’s kids) was embarrassed to encounter me in the supermarket, post-move, and started bleating about her own imaginary money troubles — “If it weren’t for our savings!”. Her husband, sweetly ignorant of the new protocol, insisted that we’d “arrange something”. She couldn’t drag him away fast enough — I think she feared contamination… 

The cost of fitting in — I don’t mean keeping up — with friends gives me chest pain. (No longer able to afford “plane holidays”, they have a week self-catering in Wales.) it’s gorgeous. I was surprised… 

Despite relinquishing the gardener and other staff, and slowly rebuilding our careers, Tom and I find it a stretch to fund a “socially acceptable” existence… Lacking spa days and stuff is not the hardship: it’s the social pressure that’s so agonising to negotiate… We spoil our children with love, but it’s naive to pretend that love is everything. Sometimes, your kids just need to go to the fair with their friends…

Couldn't they have moved further downmarket, sent their children to state schools and let them play football instead of mother-subsidised “horse-riding and cricket”?

Classy Sports and Pastimes

Conservative Stow Crats love tennis because their houses and public schools have their own tennis courts. You have to be good at tennis so you can meet the right kind of boys/girls at tennis parties after leaving your single-sex school. In London they play at exclusive clubs like the Hurlingham (pictured) or Queen's.

Pretty much anybody can follow football and it’s always good for a conversation. Lower middle-class Teales follow what they call “ice-skating”. (Why isn’t roller-skating an Olympic sport? Perhaps it is.) Only Teales become synchronised swimmers. Upper middle-class Upwards never become Olympic anything – they’re too non-competitive. They go for walks, and do Tai Chi, yoga and Pilates where you “strengthen your core” (ie slim your waist). Middle-class Weybridges play golf and join gyms. Their children go to salsa classes.

Teales join gyms and do aerobicise or zumba. They used to love dressing up in all-green leotards and footless tights in the 80s. Definitelies win medals for ballroom dancing. Their jobs keep them fit (cleaning, plastering, shelf-filling, dustbin emptying, hospital portering).

Gyms are a feature of bubble living. You live in a bubble of your own Brookside Close (the Teales), Crouch End (the Upwards), RockCotswoldsNorfolkSuffolkFulhamChelseaScotland (the Stow Crats). If you move outside your zone you have to put on blinkers so that you don’t see anything outside the bubble. Of course you go to the gym and walk on a treadmill — you can't walk around a city, you might see the wrong things and be seen in the wrong places. And besides, you’d just be breathing in pollution. Cities are far too diverse. You join a gym to be surrounded by people like you. If Stow Crats travel from Rock to North Norfolk they see nothing in between.

Bryan Teale goes kite surfing and jet-skiing, Gideon Upward plays cricket on the village green. When Bryan goes hill-walking or rock-climbing he wears a complete Goretex outfit in mauve and jade. Gideon wears army surplus and gets hypothermia. When the Nouveau-Richards join the Stow Crats to shoot grouse, their clothes and equipment are all too new.

Windsurfing was invented by Bryans, who go on “adventure holidays” to do archaeology, horse riding, paragliding, parachuting, rafting, canoeing, hiking, off-road driving, caving, camping, sailing, skiing, kayaking, climbing, diving and zorbing. They have to keep inventing new extreme sports and setting up new extreme fitness events. The upper-class Stow Crats carry on with the same sports they’ve been pursuing for centuries, which involve just as much exhaustion, cold, damp, mud and frantic running about (shooting, rugby, long walks, riding). Nouveau-Richards live the dream in the country and find they have nothing to do all day but shoot clay pigeons. Upwards go on “family adventures” far from shops and common people with their tacky taste.

Samantha and Gideon Upward would never save up for a day out, or go on a Falconry Experience day. They’d go somewhere that didn’t involve spending money (except on petrol and lunch – or they might take a picnic). They’d go to a village fete, medieval church or nature reserve, and of course they can afford petrol and eating out. But it’s the Definitelies who keep a falcon in their back garden. The Stow-Crats use one to catch their dinner, or go hunting with an owl to make it legal. The Definitelies go to the London Dungeon/McDonalds/Alton Towers. It’s a great day out for all the family! Their favourite sport is riding quad bikes.

The Teales have a hobby that the kids can get involved in and gets them all out in the fresh air: bird watching, wetland conservation, volunteering, UFO spotting. They have mild family jokes that make them laugh hysterically.

When Howard Weybridge retires, he takes up carriage driving to make new friends. He has a second garage to keep the boat in. At any time, he may take up a sport or hobby that involves buying a lot of expensive equipment and a special costume.

In the vast reaches outside London and big towns, Very Peculiar Things go on (dwile flonking, cheese rolling, woolpack races, Furry Dances). These are all rather working class. There’s nothing for local Weybridges to do but join the historical reconstruction society and hope to appear on Time Team. Mr Definitely is a metal detectorist and finds a Viking hoard that he sells on ebay.

The Upwards give dinner parties where everyone twitters about schools, food and alternative therapists (they all have their own “little man” to recommend). Sharon Definitely goes out with her friends wearing a backless minidress and bare legs in the middle of winter. She likes “having a good laugh” with her mates.

Definitely and Stow-Crats kids go clubbing, but in different clubs. Poor Upward and Weybridge kids are too busy practising the clarinet or playing netball, and being sensitive and literary or wholesome and outdoorsy.

Upwards go to the Hay on Wye literary festival (all Guardian readers want to be writers), and music festivals that have yurts you can hire. Stow Crats turn up to recurring events (Henley, Glyndebourne, Ascot) with a small number of expensive tickets that are difficult to obtain, and a rigid dress code. But Essex girls have discovered Ascot - you can dress up to the nines and drink all day! Jen calls it the “Henley Regatta” - those who go there just call it Henley. And you’re supposed to know that Glyndebourne equals opera - and that the first syllable rhymes with “mind”. Caro Stow-Crat organises charity balls for which you buy tickets and make up a “table” of friends.

According to Wikipedia, the social “season” runs from April to August and includes:

Arts: Edinburgh Fringe (“a rave for middle-class kids”, as somebody said) — Glyndebourne — The Proms (concerts at the Albert Hall in London) — Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (pictures and sculpture in London)

Horticulture: Chelsea Flower Show in London

Equestrianism: Royal Ascot — Glorious Goodwood — Badminton — The Grand National — The Royal Windsor Horse Show

The Crown: Trooping the Colour (parade for the Queen's birthday) — The Garter Service (for the Knights of the Garter)

Sport: The (Oxford versus Cambridge) Boat Race — Henley Royal Regatta (boats) — Wimbledon (tennis) — Cowes Week (yachts in the Isle of Wight) — Lord's Test Match (cricket in London)

Many of these events (Henley, Glyndebourne) involve elaborate and competitive picnics. All kinds of people go to Glyndebourne these days, so the elite go to Grange Park (where you can hire a pavilion for your picnic - and an extra one for your servants).

Classy Areas

Chez Ballard

I want to get out of the rat race of traffic. I want her to be a surfing girl, not a bar girl. I want quality of life. Characters on Escape to the Country. (Assumes the city is somewhere you want to escape.)

You're probably not going to find a vegan delicatessen round the corner in Wheatley. Relocation, Relocation

You're effectively paying £20,000 for every minute nearer to town. Property guru Phil Spencer

Westbourne Grove – an area that in 20 years has gone “from slightly rough to full-on trustafarian to total bankerisation". John Lanchester, The Guardian Jan 2012

The Guardian Weekend considers Matlock: Amusement arcades, splendidly tacky shops, chippies and caffs… The case against – some won’t like the tat... Look past the seaside veneer, and you’ll find a handsome town.

Upwards are always “looking past” things, and have trouble with the seaside. It’s too democratic – just anybody can go there. And that means the working classes, with their tacky taste, chippies and caffs.

Upwards, including psychogeographer Iain Sinclair, are bemused by writer J.G. Ballard. He spent his whole life in a 30s semi-detached house in the London suburb of Shepperton (after being liberated from the Japanese internment camp where he spent much of his childhood). Why didn’t he move away the instant he could afford it? He could have lived in a Georgian rectory in the middle of the country!

If they move out of town, upper middle class Upwards and posh Stow Crats can only live somewhere called “the real countryside”. The places where middle-class Weybridges live are ipso facto not rural and you refer to them as “leafy” – which is code for suburban. Upwards think they ought to want to live in the real countryside out of sight of other people, seeing nobody from the windows. So you can pretend all those other people who inhabit these islands don’t exist (because they are all, for some reason or other, the wrong kind of people).

Apparently one doesn’t live north of the Harrow Road... the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea's website says "from the 1960s the overcrowded and dilapidated terraces were cleared and replaced by social housing including Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower".

And which ARE the wrong parts of France?

Quotes about areas here.
Where the Upwards Live. 
Where the Definitelies Live.

Gentrification Three

“Gentrification has become more hegemonic.” Some expert on BBC.co.uk June 27, 12


Back in 1968, when Tim and Penny Hicks bought the dilapidated 157 Portland Road for £11,750, the latter's mother was shocked that they had chosen to move their family from up-market Chelsea into an area more known for rag and bone men than bankers [Notting Hill]. Forty-four years later, their house is now worth more than £2m. "I should think we were the second or third of the settlers," Penny Hicks says. BBC.co.uk June 27, 12 (The real driver of gentrification was the abolition of rent control.)

A few years ago there was a rash of shops in Stoke Newington selling retro 50s lampshades, nick nacks and furniture. They’ve all gone, or transformed themselves into shops selling framed prints, distressed industrial furniture, mattress-ticking cushions, old orange Penguin books, furniture made out of recycled offcuts (I suspect all manufactured from scratch). Or have they decamped to Dalston and points East? The moneyed prefer the shabby chic look – it’s hipsters who like Whitefriars glass. Or they did five years ago.

More about gentrification here.
Yet more about gentrification here. 

Classy Transport

The 1930s, when trams were looked down on as transport for hoi polloi. (Roger Nuttall. That's why they were all scrapped after the war. I believe the US is having similar problems in the 2020s.)

Bicycles are beloved of hipsters in Stoke Newington (with a pod/trailer for the baby). Stokey dads also like butch baby buggies that look like lawnmowers.

“People are thinking of driving less” according to Twitter. I never think of driving less. I can't possibly drive less than I do – I can't drive. My friends used to bully me to learn, or at least get a bicycle, because I ought not to travel by bus and mingle with common people. Also if I had a car I wouldn’t have to live near a bus stop, which would be on a high street – I could live in a Victorian conversion down a leafy avenue (that would be dark and scary when you came home at night). (They were so sure they knew what was best for me – why was that? They also thought I should be married to a barrister and live in Fulham.)

I expect there are different kinds of car, and that which one you buy speaks volumes about you to someone who speaks the language, but they all look alike to me. I just about tell apart a people carrier, a Chelsea tractor, a limo and a bubble car. There must be some kind that looks cool but brands you as a vulgarian. N-Rs drive bespoke Rollses with built-in champagne sets and cigar humidors.


But of course if you move to the country, you have to drive. Just don’t forget that one day you might have to give it up. Upwards think that they ought to want to live in the country – in a village, not a country town.

The tube is all right, because everybody takes it. Also, you’re underground, so you can’t see the places you’re travelling through. You can get the tube somewhere acceptable and familiar, and get out somewhere acceptable and familiar. And you have somehow not gone through the places in between -- which might be a bit downmarket. You have to ask a fellow Londoner which part of the city they live in, then you ask “What tube station is it near?” If they say “There isn’t one”, let your eyes glaze over, and drift away to talk to someone else.

Actually Ken Livingstone vastly improved transport to Stoke Newington – more 73 buses, and hopper buses that cross east-west. Night buses made a difference too. No wonder the yuppies are moving in.

Aristocratic Stow Crats and middle-class Weybridges like to ride (horses, not quad bikes), and Nouveau Richards buy a big place in the country with stables, paddock and indoor riding school (manège).

Trains are full of teenagers, old people, families with small children, and tourists with too much luggage who get on at Gatwick and have a loud conversation about what fun it is to ride on a train for a change. Trains used to have first, second and third class. In wartime morale-raiser movies everybody travels together in crowded carriages where you may be handed a baby or a beer bottle. Quiet carriages and family carriages are the new second and third class. (Trains should abolish classes and improve their interiors.)

Gentrification II

Middle-class Upwards are very keen on indigenous culture, and a sense of community, and a village feel, and preserving old ways of life. But they are colonising Newington Green bit by bit, and they and the original inhabitants live side by side, their lives interleaved with each other. People who live in Hathersage or Besant Court, or on the Milton Gardens estate, shop at Costcutter and have a cup of tea and a burger at Jesshops, the Flamingo or the Gate. Turkish people go to the Turkish Social Club and the Basak Patisserie. Upwards go to the Trattoria, the Acoustic, the Cellars Pub (or is it the Edinburgh?). They don't go to the Weavers, but perhaps everyone meets at the Alma, which has Sunday roasts and sport on big screens.

I've filtered pictures of the Green into Set A and Set B.

More about gentrification here. And here.

Classy Quotes Part Ten

She bought the home at a discount because the exterior was covered in pebbledash, unlike any other properties on the street. Now that it has been returned to the brick exterior the neighbourhood has breathed a collective sigh of relief. Times May 11, 2012

More than half of the current generation of young women, for instance, will choose a husband from their own social strata, according to figures last month from the Institute of Public Policy Research think-tank. Mail May 4, 2012

Throughout most of the movie the two leads go sight-seeing on the beach, at a rock quarry and other exciting locations. In between these adventures they talk endlessly about the environment, vegetarianism, fossil collecting, the duty of a proper citizen and proper diet, all things I want to see in a comedy. They bore anyone who will listen to them. imdb commenter on Nuts in May (1976) Ray and Candace-Marie are obviously Upwards.

We’ve kept the gym, the beauty salons, the bowling alley and the cinema. But we’ve only used the cinema once and I’ve never been in the pool. Petra Ecclestone, 23, Times April 2012

The 1950s were the end of the golden age of motoring. Suddenly the middle classes turned against cars… round about the time working class people could afford to drive. There’s a surprise. Simon Hoggart Guardian April 28 12

Chavs: the sort of people who live in two million pound houses with tar macadam'd drives, have neighbours and street lighting - just like the council house tenants they look down on upon. Commenter on Middle Class Handbook

Debrett’s latest guide to neighbourly etiquette draws a delicate but precise line when it suggests that neighbours should be invited only to “big parties” and “al fresco events”. In other words, you mustn’t allow them indoors by themselves and you shouldn’t know anyone who wouldn’t call a barbecue an al fresco event. Guardian March 2012

People from deprived areas visited both other deprived areas and prosperous areas … residents of better-off communities… tended to only visit other privileged neighbourhoods. New Scientist April 2012



Classy Quotes Part Nine.

Part Eight here.

More here, here, here, here and here. And here. And here.